This invention is living proof that we must alter central banking policy so that we can intelligently finance the transition over to a green economy. http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml This six minute video is funny and convincing! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=705940132793896
I don't understand the benefit or excitement of solar roadways? Surface area in the USA to place solar panels has never been an issue. If roads were producing solar energy, who owns that energy? The government...private enterprise? When new technologies are introduced, if they are not a viable business without government funding/subsidies, then what's the point? Here's an example; Government provides a credit or payout for buying a hybrid-electric or electric vehicle. Yet the same government does not pay a subsidy when a person buys a fossil-fuel machine which is rated at 40mpg or higher? So in this case, what is the reason to use taxpayer money to subsidize one vehicle but not another? I fully understand alternative energy but I do not support government subsidy of private enterprise...
Excellent questions OldManOnFire! I am hoping that over the coming days I will remember some of the articles that I read over the years that will give a better answer... but for the moment...... I would like to draw your attention to the impression I have that government has been penalizing itself....... and us....... in order to slow down productivity... I assume partly because we and our grandparents tended to increase our level of destruction of the environment any time that we experienced a boom in the economy?! I doubt that more than twenty percent of elected officials in the USA and Canada are entirely ignorant of the fact that President Lincoln saved American taxpayers about four billion dollars in interest payments through his rather ingenious Greenback Monetary Policy experiment..........but........... political leaders fear this information for a number of reasons............. One of those reasons is that a booming economy and destruction of the environment do go together! http://www.michaeljournal.org/lincolnkennedy.htm
Another reason why our elected officials fear the true history of central banking policy in the United States and Canada is because each political party has such disdain for their opponents that they are terrified that when the other guys get elected...… they would use that power to do far far far more harm than good......… So........ many of our political leaders decide that the wisest course of action is to say very little about what is really wrong and pass the buck on to the next administration.......... and for the moment make sure that they get a good pension out of their efforts on behalf of us ignorant and ungrateful masses?! http://www.rense.com/general66/nobeyb.htm ................
But.........if we can give political leaders reason to have genuine hope that we are no longer simply the grandchildren of the over consumers who shot, boiled, roasted, fried and barbecued passenger pigeons into extinction........and shot buffalo from the windows of trains........and if perhaps we really want to try to make the world a better place.....they might just decide to show a higher level of courage and integrity on our behalf and do what needs to be done to initiate wiser monetary policy.........in spite of the probability of the other party using this power in some ways that would be profoundly offensive to them?!
Government does not care about interest rates or deficit spending or debt. Regarding solar subsidies, it makes no difference the source of the money...politics decided to create the credits which IMO never work. If government wanted to help the hybrid-electric vehicle industry, then let the government purchase hybrids for government vehicles...but don't subsidize private industry. The government might as well nationalize the automobile industry, the aircraft industry, farming, utilities, etc. if they are so important to society and cannot stand on their own as private enterprise...
If you want produce energy from streets, take advantage from attrition and seismic waves generated by passing cars. A car discharges a lot of energy towards the street just traveling [through the movement of the wheels and their attrition with the street]. About solar panels, it's better to put them above car parks, like roofing, canopies. You will protect cars from rain and you will collect solar energy.
Energy, Inc. has primary interest in maintaining central production and distribution of energy. Ref.: monopoly. Connect the dots. Don't make me upload the same message again ! Moi r > g Energy distribution too No
I may even pass this suggestion on to the inventors .. that might turn out to be an excellent second step for their investors. https://www.facebook.com/solarroadways Solar Roadways.
If it was a good idea to build roads out of glass bricks, we already would. But glass -- even this mysterious unnamed superglass -- cracks easily and is very slippery, so it's unsuitable for road building. The "Solar Freakin' Roadways!" video was a great piece of social engineering, but the engineering concept stinks. It's basically a scam to part investors from their cash. As for getting energy from passing cars, it's possible, but that's also a scam, in an engineering sense, as there is no free lunch. A piezoelectric generator makes electricity when the substance is compressed. That is, passing cars would be making little depressions under their tires, so the cars would constantly be working to climb out of those depressions, so the cars would be getting worse gas mileage. Total efficiency of the whole system would be worse.
I think you'd be surprised by how few private enterprises could truly stand on their own without direct or indirect government investment. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that private enterprise is mythological.
Oh, HELL no...why that would cost like, I dunno, maybe BILLIONS. We have to send that money to Iraq, or Ukraine or I guess Korea next, so they can use it to blow each other up. It's FAR more important that people 8000 miles away get to kill each other than that we take care of our roads, and power and sick/old people. Oh, and it's bull(*)(*)(*)(*) that glass would crack or be slippery. Glass is, if shaped and backed properly, stronger than almost any other substance, and it's quite easily made with a rough surface
Those are four HUGE ones that take up a lot of GDP right there. But how about medicine, the trucking and railroad industries, law enforcement, (I won't include oil because you will say it's a utility), education, the invasion and occupation industry, etc. About the only industry I can think of that wouldn't crash if government withheld investment cash is the leather belt and ceramic mug industries.
Awesome and truly helpful analysis Aleksander Ulyanov! I was rather wondering about that aspect of this myself.
Medicine is not subsidized? Trucking is not subsidized? Law enforcement is government therefore is government funded. Oil is not subsidized. Education is government therefore is government funded. Military is government therefore is government funded. Most private business does not receive funding/subsidies from the government...
Medicine and trucking ARE subsidized, as are all of the rest. My point exactly. And the rest could easily be privatized, even the military. Yeah, the big ones. Like the barber shop on the corner. You know, the ones we keep around so we can say "my, my, ain't we got free enterprise".
With or without these subsidies all of these oil companies would do just fine...as opposed to what the poster said which created my response. Most of this has to do with exploration and production on US soil which is the government bribing oil companies to perform more of this on US soil instead of outside of the US...which they will do anyway.
So you believe ALL doctors and medical clinics and hospitals, etc. are subsidized? And you believe without this imaginary subsidy all of them would be out of business? The same questions with trucking? Within 20 miles of me are hundreds/thousands of businesses and none of them receive government subsidies...
Here is another way that ten or twenty or a hundred people can cooperate and begin something that can assist local businesses to be more successful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Hours http://calgarydollars.ca
And yet nobody builds anything structural out of glass bricks. Load-bearing walls use brick bricks, never glass. Because glass stinks at load bearing. If it had a rough surface, it wouldn't be transparent, which would make it useless for solar.
